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Artist
Slender Means
12+ albums
indierockpopAllto listen to
about
Is there a double-edged sword that cuts as incisively both ways for a rock band as the acclaimed debut album? Slender Means might be at a loss to say what it is. The Seattle’s band’s razor-sharp Neon & Ruin (Mt Fuji Records) was hailed as “an amazingly accomplished album of indie-pop perfection” (KEXP.org), “an indie-pop grand slam” (The Stranger), and “a powerful and masterful debut, as passionate as it is rocking” (MSN). Packing eleven songs and innumerable hooks into less than forty minutes, the album drew inspiration from – and invoked printed comparisons to – The Kinks, The Shins, The Strokes, Cheap Trick, Travis, Supergrass, The Chameleons, Big Star, The Smiths, and Elvis Costello, among others. But even with the band’s influences proudly on its sleeve, the sound in the grooves was wholly Slender Means. The songs themselves were the attractions. The rhythm section was rock solid, the guitars “delicately interlaced,” and Votolato’s harmonies managed to improve Dawson’s already pitch-perfect tenor. But this combination merely provided the canvas. The songs – including “Painless Life,” “I Could Be Cruel,” and “Van Gogh” – were the band’s paintings. And then, inevitably, there came the matter of following that up. But there will be time for that later. Before they could record that auspicious debut, each member of Slender Means had already been around the block a few times. There was the time Josh Dawson (Telecaster, voice) played with his old band Light Heavyweig
